Ken Dixon: How to referee 7 still in ring

Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, center, and opponent Ned Lamont, right, have a laugh following the Connecticut Democratic gubernatorial primary debate at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield on Thursday. At left is Hearst Connecticut Media moderator Ken Dixon. less

Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, center, and opponent Ned Lamont, right, have a laugh following the Connecticut Democratic gubernatorial primary debate at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield on Thursday. At left is ... more

Photo: Brian A. Pounds / Hearst Connecticut Media

Photo: Brian A. Pounds / Hearst Connecticut Media

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Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, center, and opponent Ned Lamont, right, have a laugh following the Connecticut Democratic gubernatorial primary debate at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield on Thursday. At left is Hearst Connecticut Media moderator Ken Dixon. less

Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, center, and opponent Ned Lamont, right, have a laugh following the Connecticut Democratic gubernatorial primary debate at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield on Thursday. At left is ... more

Photo: Brian A. Pounds / Hearst Connecticut Media

Ken Dixon: How to referee 7 still in ring

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There are good and bad things about presiding over debates among this current cast of characters who think they want to be the next governor of Connecticut.

On the positive side, I got to see them up-close and personal.

But I did have to sit in a high chair, in a posture that made me feel like a baby stork, teetering up on a house gutter. Then there was that pesky ringing phone, and the ominous dude from the Ganim campaign.

Sacred Heart University, WSHU Public Radio and Hearst Connecticut Media co-sponsored a 90-minute Republican debate, followed a couple days later by a throwdown between the two Democrats who want to take over when Gov. Dan Malloy’s second four-year term stutters to a halt in January.

I can’t imagine that there is a Chester Bowles, Abe Ribicoff or Lowell P. Weicker Jr., lurking among this current crop of wannabes. There might not even be a Dan Malloy.

There could be some felonious Rowland potential, perhaps, but at least Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim front-loaded his federal-prison commitment.

The five Republican candidates are currently in a slightly amusing self-selection process, with the unexperienced “Ste” contingent — the imperious Bob Stefanowski of Madison and the unflappable David Stemerman of Greenwich — hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of dollars at each other in scorched-earth TV attacks over who’s less-electable.

The debate blather shifted to Stefanowski’s last job, heading DFC Global, a short-term-loan company between 2014 and 2017, in the wake of a scandal that returned more than 15 million British pounds for gouging consumers at interest rates approaching 3,000 percent.

Stefanowski, who refused to respond to a Trump-related question — in the style of a CEO accustomed to being unanswerable to anyone but a prosecutor — then accused Stemerman of making big bucks shuffling around stocks in the former multi-billion-dollar hedge fund that he conveniently shut down to run for office.

Also on Stefanowski’s resume are stints as executives at General Electric and UBS. Remember them?

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, the GOP-endorsed candidate, and Westport tech exec Steve Obsitnik, are generally staying above the fray. Tim Herbst, the former first selectman of Trumbull, like Boughton, actually has elective-office experience.

At some point in the arguing, I forgot to give Obsitnik a chance to answer a question. But at least he was paying attention and the oversight was quickly rectified. Ah, but the ringing device in my pants’ pocket ...

Well, by then we needed some comic relief, so it was a perfect moment for some unidentified telemarketer from South Amboy, New Jersey, to dial the mobile phone I thought had been silenced.

In preparation for the second debate, I thought about the jargon of the campaign trail. Like, when a candidate says they’re “battle-tested,” it’s a way of admitting they’ve lost political races.

When candidates brag about their “donations,” it’s not as if they are running nonprofits or public radio stations that depend on the kindness of listeners.

No, politicians collect “contributions” from supporters who want to receive political consideration in return. Yeah, the craps tables at Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun might offer better investment opportunities — or even a rock-bottom $13 share of GE, for that matter — but access to pols has its own rewards. That’s why the state’s voluntary public-financing campaign was designed: to keep special-interest money out of top-of-the-ticket and General Assembly races.

When candidates talk about how public financing is “taxpayers’ money,” they’re wrong. It’s funded mostly by the estates of people who died without heirs and the money has reverted to the state treasurer.

Ned Lamont, who won the Democratic endorsement at the May convention, and Ganim, who petitioned his way to the Aug. 14 primary, were only slightly less combative. The mayor, who shall always be haunted by the seven-year prison stretch for public corruption, showed flashes of his retail-political charm, while Lamont was earnest and tried to avoid a class-warfare slugfest.

When the hour was over and the crowd was greeting, gabbing and thinning out, I was talking with a couple people when I noticed a guy paging through the notes I left on the stork stool. I reached over and grabbed them.

He asked for an apology and upon my decline, he took a step toward me, blood in his eye, in a familiar way that made me wonder how many of the 900 absentee ballots in circulation from the Bridgeport city clerk’s office he might have filled out.

Another Ganim acolyte led him away.

Ken Dixon, political editor and columnist, can be reached at 860-549-4670 or at kdixon@ctpost.com. Visit him at twitter.com/KenDixonCT and on Facebook at kendixonct.hearst.